The candy in Gu Yuan’s palm was almost squished out of shape. The October weather was starting to get hot and dry, and Gu Yuan stood at the entrance of the police station, feeling unusually irritable.

Why is this happening?

He asked himself but couldn’t find an answer. This was his weakness; he couldn’t figure out others’ thoughts, not even his own feelings.

He took out his phone and sent a message to Wen Zihan, who was far away in America: “If one day I say something that offends you, would you be mad?”

Wen Zihan quickly replied: “How could I be mad at you? As long as it doesn’t touch my principles, everything’s fine.”

Gu Yuan felt even more puzzled after reading it. Just as he was racking his brain, an arm suddenly draped over his shoulder. He instinctively shrugged it off, acting very guarded, like a startled deer.

The owner of the arm still had that nonchalant smile on his face: “What are you thinking about?”

Gu Yuan’s mind went blank for a moment as he tried to make sense of the situation: “Can we consider ourselves friends now?”

“Yeah,” Mo Lin said, “We’ve gone from acquaintances to friends.”

Gu Yuan felt even more confused, leaving Mo Lin behind as he walked straight ahead until he reached Mo Lin’s car, opened the passenger door, and sat inside.

The fragrance in the car made him uneasy. He pulled the hood of his trench coat over his head, leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, and tried to sort out his tangled thoughts.

Mo Lin gently closed the car door, his fingers tapping the steering wheel as if unconsciously. He didn’t start the car immediately but turned his head to look at Gu Yuan, who was in a “shut-in” state in the passenger seat. He looked like a hedgehog, untouchable.

Even with his eyes closed, Gu Yuan could feel Mo Lin looking at him. He frowned slightly: “Are you going to drive or not?”

As soon as he said that, he smelled a faint scent of tobacco slowly approaching him, even passing over his body, continuing to probe forward…

Gu Yuan suddenly opened his eyes, his body shrinking back defensively.

He saw the other person hook his slender fingers and pull out a seatbelt from the right side of the seat…

His movements were slow, inversely proportional to the rapid beating of Gu Yuan’s heart.

“Click.” The seatbelt was fastened.

“Don’t rush, safety first.”

Mo Lin’s eyes curved slightly as he slowly sat up straight, his hand on the steering wheel, the strap of his watch reflecting a metallic sheen.

Gu Yuan only felt that this reflective thing was bothering him, so he pulled down the brim of his hat to block it.

Mo Lin didn’t speak the whole way because he clearly understood his current situation. If he made any noise, the person next to him might explode on the spot.

When they returned to the food street, the roller shutter door of Qiu’s Barbecue was half-open, and it was dark inside with no lights on.

Mo Lin stood outside the door and knocked on the roller shutter: “Is anyone inside?”

Before long, a tall, skinny teenager walked out, wearing the school uniform of Seventh High, holding a stack of plates, with the zipper of his uniform wide open.

He looked a bit carefree but had a clean and delicate face. His hair was a bit long, covering his forehead, making his face look even smaller.

“Business starts at 7 PM, you’re early.” He turned his back to the two, opened the sterilizer, and put the unsterilized plates inside.

“Are you Qiu Yao?” Mo Lin asked.

Qiu Yao’s body paused for a moment, then he turned around to look at the two: “Yeah, what’s up?”

Gu Yuan stood coldly at the door: “Police.”

Qiu Yao sized up the speaker. He was wearing a black trench coat, the hood covering half his face, exuding a gloomy aura, looking like a robber. The person standing to his right was in a suit, exuding the vibe of a rich and handsome guy.

Qiu Yao seemed calm as he closed the sterilizer: “Police? You guys? Where’s your badge?”

“Middle schoolers these days are so cautious, the school must be doing a good job teaching them.” Mo Lin smiled, taking out his badge.

After confirming their identities, Qiu Yao seemed much more compliant.

Gu Yuan: “Zhou Jie handed you her worn school uniform through the window last night. Where’s her uniform?”

“What do you need her worn school uniform for?”

Mo Lin: “To check for DNA from bloodstains. Is there a problem?”

“There are no bloodstains on the clothes, and I’ve already washed the uniform. It should be dry by now. Do you still want it?”

“Washed?” Mo Lin couldn’t help but take another look at him.

“There really are no bloodstains on the clothes. I’ll go get it for you.” Qiu Yao turned and went upstairs.

Before long, he came down with a jacket: “I don’t want this anymore. The way you talk about it is scary.”

Gu Yuan didn’t want to waste time on this, quickly pulling out a large evidence bag from his pocket, stuffing the clothes inside, and preparing to leave.

Mo Lin noticed a 1cm cut on the boy’s right index finger. He raised his eyebrows and casually asked, “Can I take a look upstairs?”

The boy’s eyebrows twitched, seeming a bit unwilling but unable to refuse: “What do you want to see?”

“To study the window structure.”

Upstairs, Mo Lin noticed the laoban niang wasn’t home, so he asked, “Where’s your mom?”

“She went to restock.”

“Don’t you have school today?”

“I wasn’t feeling well, so I took a leave.”

“Really? What’s wrong?”

“Stomachache, but it’s much better now.”

At the stairway, there was an old wooden ladder. The ladder was very old, its color close to black-gray, but the bottom rung had a large section shaved off by a sharp blade, revealing a relatively new wooden structure.

There were no wood chips on the ground, but it was certain that the shaving marks were left not long ago.

When they came in the morning, they didn’t notice such a ladder lying here on the second floor.

Gu Yuan also noticed, frowning slightly.

The three of them entered the boy’s room. On the bedside table was a poster, indeed of the celebrity Yuan Tongtong, and the size of this poster seemed to match the one in Zhou Jie’s room, with similar material.

There were drag marks on the floor, not yet dried, but Gu Yuan clearly remembered that the floor was already clean in the morning, so there was no need to mop it again. And the boy just said he wasn’t feeling well, shouldn’t he be resting?

The more Gu Yuan thought about it, the more something felt off. He took out his phone and called Yan Ji, who answered immediately.

“Come over next door, there’s something wrong here.”

Hearing there was a problem, Yan Ji rushed over with tools: “Where’s the problem?”

At this point, Qiu Yao’s expression had subtly changed: “Officer, how could there be a problem here?”

Yan Ji asked everyone to wait downstairs and used a laser instrument to search the room for possible traces. Before long, he came downstairs looking bewildered: “There are traces of wiped blood in the room… Is there a problem with this blood?”

Gu Yuan: “We’ll know after testing.”

At this point, sweat was already beading on the boy’s forehead, and he looked a bit uneasy.

“Sorry, you might have to come with us,” Mo Lin said with a smile.

Qiu Yao started to lose his composure: “Why are you taking me?”

“It’s just to the police station for a chat, no need to be so nervous,” Yan Ji said.

Qiu Yao stopped talking, hiding his dissatisfaction and extra emotions, and followed the police into the car.

Mo Lin looked straight ahead, driving seriously, and suddenly asked Gu Yuan: “What do you think?”

“If the blood on Qiu Yao’s floor is the victim’s, then this case gets more complicated.”

“What if it’s not?”

“Then he wouldn’t need to clean the floor repeatedly.”

Mo Lin: “Qiu Yao does seem to have issues…”

*

At 3 PM, the DNA report on the floor blood finally came out.

Gu Yuan stared at the results on the report, lost in thought.

Li Meng walked over, glanced at the report: “How could it be his own blood?”

Gu Yuan looked through the interrogation room’s glass window at the boy inside: “When a person experiences a stress response, the sympathetic nervous system gets excited, adrenaline secretion increases, heart rate speeds up, and blood pressure rises…”

Li Meng: “Can you say something I can understand?”

Gu Yuan: “He’s scared.”

Li Meng: “I can see that. People are like that when they’re scared.”

But did Gu Yuan just analyze all that to reach this conclusion? Sometimes he really couldn’t understand Gu Yuan’s thought process.

The chat box on the computer screen flashed, and a file waiting to be received popped up. Gu Yuan immediately opened it. It was the test results of the marks on the school uniform, with the results column stating: “Suspected bloodstain residue.”

“Suspected… so it can’t be used as evidence,” Li Meng said, a bit disappointed.

At this point, the case hit another bottleneck. Almost everyone believed the little girl Zhou Jie was the biggest suspect, but the girl was too calm, looking as if she knew nothing.

And as a neighbor, Qiu Yao logically couldn’t have directly participated in the murder, but from the moment he entered the interrogation room until now, his forehead was sweating, and his hands and feet were trembling slightly. What was he worried about?

As a police instinct, they had to temporarily keep Qiu Yao here for interrogation. Maybe he could reveal something.

“I really don’t know anything. Why was my brother knocked out? Didn’t he accidentally fall into the oil pot? Did you make a mistake during the autopsy…”

The girl asked the recording officer while sobbing softly: “When can I leave here? I want to go back to school…”

And on Qiu Yao’s side…

“Can I leave now… I really don’t know anything… It’s just borrowing a school uniform… Is it that serious?”

It was clear that Qiu Yao was trying hard to stay calm, but his body betrayed him.

Li Meng scratched his head: “The boy’s mental strength isn’t great. How about we interrogate the boy first?”

“Wait a minute.” Mo Lin watched the computer screen showing Qiu Yao, casually saying: “It’s not the right time yet. Let him stew a bit longer…”

“Why?” Meng Lan asked cautiously.

“The best time to interrogate a suspect is when their defenses completely collapse. This person doesn’t need us to set the stage; if he stews a bit longer, he can achieve the same effect.”